guest post: brunch baby

Today we have a guest post from Emi in Brooklyn. If you don't know yet Emi is my best friend of 30 years (pretty much since birth). We keep up online throughout the week via gchat, email and text. When not texting photos of Mo and Nicky (her posh city livin' cat) we are sharing links from the web featuring unnecessary home furnishings, black leather boots and new favorite blog posts. We like the idea of sharing this space with you to feature the real life and times of women these days. Not just madres but real women living and dealing with their real lives.
Earlier this month we were emailing about some posts she would be lining up for the blog and we fell into the topic of dining with your friends AND their kids. Emi and Steve are not yet parents so they have the fun job of being the good friends that oblige to brunch with their friends and their friends kids.

Click through to read this story. Not only cause we all can relate but also cause Emi is 100x a better writer than I ever will be.

Breakfast with baby (and I'm the baby)

This morning Steve and I hailed a cab down to Farm on Adderley, a farm-to-table Brooklyn staple, for a brunch date with our friends Jesse, Ava and their 3 year old Clay.

I'd been looking forward to the date all week, since we only get to see them every few months... and because Farm on Adderley has toasted chocolate bread with butter and sea salt as breakfast appetizers, and I love the idea of a breakfast appetizer.

In the cab I started prepping my questions for Clay. Wait, whaaaaat? Hear me out. You know that love you feel for your friend's cute kid? How you envision a reunion where they jump on your lap and tell you all about how much they've missed you and how they've enjoyed the books and toys you've given them? How they skipped two grades already because you only shop for them at fancy little shops which feature brain-teasing fair-trade toys made out of sustainable wood and curated books printed with beet ink on recycled bamboo, which is basically guaranteed to make for a well-rounded, socially-adept, thoughtful and caring human?

Cut to reality, where they glare at you suspiciously for the entirety of a meal, all the while interrupting your friend every 5 seconds to whisper something to them. (Okay, I said it. So sue me. I miss my friends!)

I like to just get right passed all that cold shoulder. I love getting to know my friend's kids, and after reading this interesting post on Cup of Jo about having meaningful chats with kids beyond complementing their looks, I have been thinking a lot about what engaging conversation I might be able to dive into.

The benefits of this are two-fold. First up, I get to follow connections that a 3-year old brain makes, which generally leads to interesting places. I have a good time seeing my friends in their kids, and getting to know them as their own little independent humans. It also means that they'll feel listened to, will eventually tire of all this sharing and move on to whatever entertainment they brought for themselves, and we can then have quality adult chats too.

I arrived to the restaurant so ready for this. Nothing too crazy or inventive, but as a professional question asker, I know that you can go a lot of different places with a single question: What books are you into? What experiments did you do this week in preschool? (His school is science-oriented.) What do you dream about? What do you talk about with your friends?

And you know what? They strolled up with a napping kid, and he slept for the entire meal. "PHEW!!!!" they said! "We can actually talk to you! With 100% concentration!" It was so great- we were manically chatting the entire time.

As we got up and strolled to the subway, Clay awoke and we got some time with him too. And you know what he's reading? Moonlight Animals. It looks so cool! Ava assures me that my beet juice books are much beloved too.